Volume 265 | No. 24

2016—The lift span of the Sarah Long Bridge is raised for the last time. 2008—On a tip from an Afghani, a U.S. AC-130 gunship shoots up Azizabad. The Afghani’s rival is among the 91 dead; the rest are mostly civilian women and children. Embedded in this bloody fiasco is Fox’s Ollie North, who calls it a great victory. 2002—The Bush Administration announces trade sanctions on North Korea, with which we do not trade. 1992—An FBI sniper wounds Randy Weaver and kills his wife Vicki at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. 1991—Derick Lynn Peterson’s obstinant heart continues beating for ten minutes after his electrocution, so Virginia officials …

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2017—As an aide tells him, “Don’t look,” President Trump takes off his protective glasses and stares at the sun as it is being eclipsed. 2017—The Navy destroyer U.S.S. McCain collides with a freighter in the Gulf of Molucca; ten sailors die. This, 65 days after the destroyer U.S.S. Fitzgerald hits a freight ship off Honshu, killing seven aboard. 1992—Samuel Weaver, 14, and U.S. Marshal W.F. Degan die in a shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. 1982—The U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion murders more than 200 Salvadorans at El Calabozo. 1976—A two-day occupation of the Seabrook, N.H. nuke site begins. 1963—Ngo Dinh Nhu’s secret police kill hundreds of Buddhist …

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2018—Greta Thunberg strikes, demanding action on the climate crisis. 1998—Days after admitting he’d lied about sex with an intern, Bill Clinton throws 13 Tomahawk missiles at Sudan’s only pharmaceutical factory. 1965—Keene, N.H. seminary student & civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels is murdered in Nayneville, Ala. White jurors acquit his killer. 1945—Charles de Gaulle is warned by his ex-puppet Emperor Bao Dai that if France tries to rule Vietnam, “it will no longer be obeyed; each village will be a nest of resistance, each former collaborator an enemy, and your officials and colonists will themselves ask to leave this atmosphere which they will be unable to …

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1999—The FBI puts the name of James “Whitey” Bulger—its partner in crime—on the Most-Wanted List. 1997—Anti-regulation fanatic Carl Drega murders two cops, a selectman, and a judge in Colebrook, N.H. The carnage inspires Vin Suprynowicz, future Signed Member of the Free State Project, to write an essay and a book sympathizing with the killer. 1953—Despite setbacks four days earlier, the CIA’s coup succeeds in Iran. All will be well now, right? 1950—Called “blind,” “stupid,” and “pig-headed,” Rep. Clarence Cannon, [D-Mo.], shouts “I’ve taken all I’m going to” as he rushes Sen. Kenneth McKellar [D-Tenn.]. Senators wrest the gavel from McKellar, 81, before he can apply …

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1996—The U.S. prison population hits 1,600,000, double what it had been just 10 years earlier. 1988—Accepting the GOP nomination, George H.[H.]W. Bush solemnly vows, “Read my lips: no new taxes!” 1960—Kindly old Ike OKs a CIA plot to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Congo. 1959—Sailors aboard the U.S.S. Wasp bring a severe fire under control, barely averting the need to flood the ship’s nuclear weapons storage space. 1950—A climbing party at the summit of the Matterhorn (14,692 feet) encounters a ten-month-old black and white kitten from the Hotel Belvedere, situated at 10,820 feet. 1933—Germany introduces the Volksempfänger, or Peoples’ Radio. Built to Joseph Goebbels’ …

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2008—Maudie Hopkins dies in Arkansas at 93. She married Confederate States Army vet William M. Cantrell in 1934; he was 86, she was 19. 2002—U.S. Generals admit that the U.S. assisted Iraq during its war against Iran knowing that Saddam Hussein would “use chemical weapons against his own people.” 1998—“It depends,” President Clinton tells a Grand Jury, “on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” 1988—A Pakistani C-130 explodes in mid-air killing President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. General Pervez Musharraf, also scheduled to be on-board, somehow misses the flight. 1988—J. Danforth Quayle informs the Republican National Convention, “in 1988 the question is whether we’re going forward …

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